<<Who else in this industry could afford to jump start their CMP business by placing so many( my estimate is that it was close to 30) evals into the field?>>
No one is as aggressive as AMAT when it comes to marketing tools in customer applications where they do not have an incumbent tool. None of the other competitors could give away as many tools at a loss as you purport AMAT did. Lam and Ebara have the deepest pockets, but anecdotal evidence suggests that they are not as aggressive in marketing initial tools as AMAT. Other competitors like Obsidian, Strausbaugh, SpeedFam-IPEC, and Cybeq can not afford to come close to that level of aggressiveness. One reason for AMAT's recent success is a validation of their intense marketing during the downturn, while most competitors were hunkering down, laying off huge numbers of people (AMAT laid off people, too), and awaiting the upturn.
<<How will SFAM/IPEC rationalize their product lines? I've seen the comments about IPEC offering potentially better cu. Given the combined IP/ knowledge of the company can somebody give a breakdown how the various systems stack up against AMAT's...I'd appreciate some kind of synopsis on the SFAM/IPEC "best of breed" relative to the AMAT systems.>>
As reported in this thread before, SFAM plans to market the Auriga-C into the oxide market and the IPEC 776 into the metals market (W and Cu). For traditional oxide applications, I contend that the Auriga-C is a superior solution to the Mirra for most customers, though I admit that SFAM has not been successful in convincing many potential customers about this reality. I've outlined my rationale for this conclusion in a previous post (cost of ownership, throughput, reliability, etc.)
(Got to go. I'll continue post later if I have time) |
